


This Man Has Been Murdered!

by weakinteraction



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M, Holodecks/Holosuites, References to Clue | Cluedo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-06 01:08:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15875385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Beverly convinces her friends to join in an improvisation-exercise-cum-murder-mystery-game.[set in an AU where Beverly and Jean-Luc get together some time in late S3 or early S4]





	This Man Has Been Murdered!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



"Now remember, Jean-Luc, this isn't Dixon Hill."

"You're telling me," Jean-Luc said in the exaggerated drawl he used for the character. "Dix would never be able to afford threads like these." He pulled at the lapels of his tuxedo for emphasis.

"What I mean is, you can't just wait for someone to come in and start waving a gun around while explaining half the plot."

Jean-Luc pulled a face, but didn't respond directly. Instead, he looked his costume up and down. "So who _am_ I supposed to be?"

"You are Professor Plum, an extremely eminent scientist."

"And I'm the murderer?"

"Possibly," Beverly said. "We won't find out until the program starts. The computer will put us all in our individual rooms, but one of us will receive a note telling us that we did it."

"And who are you?"

Beverly peered into the mirror to fix her earrings in place. "I am Mrs Peacock, a highly respected society lady," she said. "Now, can you help me fasten my dress?"

Jean-Luc pulled up the zip. "I'm sure it wouldn't be too damaging to the verisimilitude to use magnetic autofastenings," he said.

"It helps me get into character," Beverly said waspishly.

"Really? Because I'm not sure a respected society lady wouldn't be asking a man she hardly knows to do that for her."

"A respected society lady who may or may not be a murderer," Beverly pointed out.

* * *

Five minutes later, they were standing outside holodeck three with the others.

"I cannot believe you all talked me into _this_ ," Deanna said, indicating her Miss Scarlet costume with a flourish.

"Oh come on, it's going to be fun," Will said. "And if the captain has deigned to join us ..."

"It wasn't _too_ hard to persuade him," Beverly said. Jean-Luc just harrumphed.

Geordi fiddled with his dog collar, trying to get more comfortable. "Well then, looks like we're just waiting for Data."

Will turned to Beverly, mock-serious. "You're absolutely certain this program can't create another Moriarty situation?"

"The computer only runs the game," Beverly said.

"We're competing against each other to find out who did it."

"Or escape detection," Jean-Luc said. "In the case of whichever of us does turn out to be the murderer."

"Now, that _will_ be an interesting challenge for Data," Geordi said.

"Wait a minute, 'competing'?" Deanna said. "I thought this was something more like a group improvisation exercise."

"It's both," Beverly said. "I promise you, it's fun."

"Where did you get it from?" Will asked.

Beverly turned to Jean-Luc. "You remember how I was in that drama group at the Academy?" He gave a slightly rueful nod; the style of that group had never been to his taste, so he'd stuck to his serious Shakespeare and Pataka productions. They'd both wondered over the years how things might have turned out differently if they had done more than politely watch each other's theatrical efforts. "One of the other people in the group, Elyssa, was really pre-Atomic-Horror games and pastimes. It was originally a board game, but she worked out how to turn it into an improvisation exercise. And last month, she sent me a holo version."

"You used to play it in live action?" Geordi said. "I'm impressed."

"We had to," Beverly said. "Holosimulations were reserved for Serious Training Purposes back in those days. But there were plenty of historic properties around San Francisco whose custodians we were able to sweet-talk into letting us into after hours. One time we even saved up a month's worth of recreational transporter credit to take ourselves to a real stately home in Royal Berkshire."

"I apologise for being late," came a familiar voice from around the curve of the corridor. "This costume proved rather more difficult than I had at first anticipated."

Beverly could see the others struggling to keep a straight face at Data's Mrs White get-up. He had put a great deal of effort into it, and if it wasn't for his pale skin and yellow eyes he might have been nearly unrecognisable.

"Well, now that we're all here," Beverly said. "Shall we?"

The others nodded.

"Computer, begin program."

* * *

Beverly hadn't had a note; she was slightly surprised to realise that she was a little disappointed.

When they'd gathered around Dr Black's body, she'd begun to examine it carefully, crouching down. "No obvious ligature marks," she said. "So we can eliminate the rope ..."

Jean-Luc crouched down next to her. "Er, yes, I concur," he said, slightly too exaggeratedly. "Tell me, madam, did you have a chance to attend any public dissections when you were in London for the season?"

Entirely the wrong period, Beverly thought, but he did have a point that she was slipping out of character. "Something like that," she said quietly. "So, Professor, what conclusions do _you_ draw?"

Jean-Luc looked flustered for a moment. But then he stood back up, looked at the others seriously. "It is very clear to me that this man ... has been murdered!"

* * *

"I don't see why I have to come with you," Jean-Luc said. "I have my own investigations to conduct."

"Well, now that I've established that your alibi is sound and eliminated you from my inquiries, it's useful to have someone to help me test out certain theories with. See whether certain angles are possible, that sort of thing."

He followed her up the stairs, seemingly not picking up on the double entendre. "But I haven't eliminated you from _my_ inquiries," he protested. "How do I know you're not luring me into a trap?"

"Maybe I am," Beverly said as she opened the bedroom door. "Would you like it if I was?"

Jean-Luc stiffened and flushed slightly. "It would help me reach an overall conclusion faster if I could be absolutely certain that it _was_ you, leave me more time to work out where and how you did it ..."

"I suppose it would," Beverly said. "Except that you'd have to escape from my clutches first." She beckoned him in. "Assuming you wanted to, of course."

* * *

Jean-Luc was peering into the triptych of mirrors on the dressing table. "So, do you really think that someone could have bounced a bullet off these mirrors to hit Dr Black in the ...?"

"No," Beverly said. "I don't think that at all." While he had been studying her nonsensical theory -- not really even plausible for phasers, let alone projectile weapons -- she had been removing her outer garments and was now lying on the bed. She adjusted her position slightly so that Jean-Luc would have a three-fold vision of her.

"I see your reputation as an _honourable_ society lady may be rather erroneous," Jean-Luc said.

"So what if it is, Professor? Are you really telling me that you don't want--"

And then he was on her, fumbling at her suspenders even as his own garments fell away easily -- she hadn't been able to persuade him to abandon 24th Century fasteners for his own costume. She was gratified at feeling the head of his cock pushing into her thigh as she worked, smiled to herself at the idea that he had got hard for her so quickly.

"Stop wasting time," she said. She reached down and stroked him, none too gently, and guided him towards her pussy. With the other hand, she pulled the fabric of her panties to one side, so that he could slide into her without any further struggles with her undergarments.

She was already wet, had been growing gradually more aroused all evening as the opportunity to put her plan into action, play her game-within-a-game, came closer. But the feeling of him inside her, the urgency of his thrusts combined with the intensity of the look in his eyes, combined to make her even wetter. They were Beverly and Jean-Luc, old friends and newer lovers, but here, now, they were also Mrs Peacock and Professor Plum, attracted but not trusting one another, feeling the thrill of such intimacy for the first time.

He reached down with one hand, sliding it under the waistband to find her mound. After a few moments of searching for the right angle, he began to rub her clit with two fingers pressed together, almost grinding them against her as he fucked her harder and harder.

Soon, they both came. He pulled out, quickly pulling his pants back up. "We mustn't let the others suspect," he said. "If they think we're working together--"

"I could still prove to be the murderer," she said.

"I know," he said.

"Is that part of what made it good?"

He didn't answer.

* * *

Geordi turned from the fireplace with a solemn air. "I think I _might_ have figured it out," he said, sounding exactly the same way he did when he was puzzling through a mysterious anomaly in the Enterprise's plasma conduits. Readopting the Reverend Green persona, he turned and pointed an accusatory finger at Beverly. "It was _you_ , Mrs Peacock, in the conservatory, with the candlestick."

"I assure you it wasn't," Beverly said, only just managing to keep in character herself. "And anyway, even if I had been in the conservatory at the time, why would I have used the candlestick when we later found out that the revolver was right there all along?"

It was all getting a little ridiculous. Pretty soon they would have tried _all_ the theoretically possible combinations of murderer, weapon and location; when they hit the right one, the computer was supposed to send in a policeman character to wrap things up. They had even tried the "we all did it" solution, even though presumably everyone else who hadn't received an envelope had been certain it didn't apply.

Beverly had at first thought that her failure to have much of an idea about the solution, as well as Jean-Luc's, could be attributed to the fact that they had been ... indulging themselves rather than investigating thoroughly. And perhaps, she thought, the same was true of Will and Deanna. But by now she was beginning to suspect that there was something wrong with the trigger.

"If I may," Data said, in a very different voice to the one he'd been using for Mrs White so far, "I believe I may be able to assist us in solving this heinous crime." He stood up and pulled at his costume, suddenly revealing Sherlock Holmes's deerstalker and overcoat.

They all did a doubletake. It was Geordi who recovered enough to speak first. "Data, wait, have you been wearing that underneath Mrs White's outfit the whole time?"

"You forget, my good Wa-- Reverend, that the great detective is also a master of disguise!" Suddenly switching to his usual tone of voice, he addressed them all, "I was uncertain how to approach this 'improvisation exercise', and after some consideration decided that getting into character as Sherlock Holmes getting into character might assist me. I hope that that was not inappropriate."

"Captain, you're not by any chance Dixon Hill undercover 'across the pond', are you?" Will asked.

Beverly smirked. "I told him he definitely wasn't allowed."

"I have to say though," Jean-Luc said mildly, "I really wouldn't mind right now if someone came in and started 'waving a gun around while explaining half the plot'."

"Has something gone wrong with the program?" Will asked.

"It's possible," Beverly said, admitting defeat to herself. "Computer, arch."

The arch shimmered into existence by the doors to the conservatory. Beverly crossed to it and started digging into the settings. A subspace message notification was blinking at her in the corner of the display; that was curious -- it would usually be waiting for her in her quarters later. Then she realised that it was flagged as relevant to this specific holoprogram, and saw that it was from Elyssa. She tapped it, setting the volume low so that the others wouldn't overhear.

"Hi, everyone." It was only then that Beverly noticed the message was distributed to all the former members of their group. "I just wanted to flag something up about the program. You have to initialise the envelope function manually before you start playing to have the computer assign a murderer. I used the code we had for setting that up back at the Academy when it wasn't on the holodeck, just the computer sending one of us a message, and it isn't fully integrated yet. If you don't do that, you could be stuck going round in circles for a long time. Used to happen in the old board game version as well, according to some of my sources. Anyway, sorry about that, I'll send you all a patched version soon. Let me know how you get on if you do play it with your crewmates, though, I'd be very interested to hear."

Beverly smiled to herself. Now that she knew what was going on, it was easy to find the relevant settings and activate them. Sure enough, the moment she did, an envelope appeared in her hand.

"Wait, I was right; it _was_ you!" Geordi said.

Beverly opened the envelope. "In the bedroom," she read out, carefully avoiding Jean-Luc's eye. "With the lead pipe, apparently."

"I was indeed about to explain that that was one remaining plausible solution," Data said.

"But if even _I_ didn't know," Beverly said, "there's no real way anyone was supposed to be able to work it out." She looked up. "I'm sorry, everyone. I feel as though I've wasted your time."

"Not at all," Will said generously as he led Deanna out of the holodeck. "We had a lot of fun."

"I shall look forward to another encounter," Data said, bowing to her minutely. "Surely Mrs Peacock is a villain to rival Moriarty himself!"

Geordi leaned towards him. "It's not the same murderer each time," he reminded him. "It could even be you next time."

"An intriguing prospect indeed," Data said.

A few moments later, only Jean-Luc was left.

"Computer, end program," Beverly said.

"Belay that order," Jean-Luc said; the black-and-yellow grid of the holodeck walls was visible for just the briefest moment before the country house snapped back into place. "Now that I know exactly how dangerous you are, I think some further investigation of your activities in the bedroom is definitely warranted."


End file.
